India faces a major demographic upheaval. The sharply rising Muslim numbers, both in absolute and percentage terms, and a corresponding decline in the population of Hindus, Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists has the potential to escalate fault-line conflicts and create a Lebanon-like situation. Data from the last six censuses held since 1951 suggests that
Europe has woken up to the threat of likely Muslim domination of the continent within the next few decades. Across Europe, the fertility rates of Christians have fallen far below the replacement level of 2.1 children per woman. Islam is already the second largest religion of almost every European country. The European Union has an estimated 15-20 m
Islamists are great strategists. Decades ago, while Europe slept and India slumbered, their leaders decided on a powerful global game changer, seeing in demography the key to power in a democracy, as elections are won or lost on the basis of voter support to a particular party or candidate. So, to achieve their ambition of world dominion, they deci
Analysis of the Official Cover-up of the Unwelcome Truths about the Canadian Genocide of Aboriginal Children: We’ve just spent half a day (perhaps too much) reading a 115-page tome, neither scholarly nor journalistic mais tous les deux, entitled “They Came For The Children.” It’s the interim report of the Truth and Reconcili
In an extremely myopic manoeuvre aimed at pleasing the world gendarme, India aborted all chances of rising as a regionally respected power by supporting the US-led resolution to censure Sri Lanka at the UN Human Rights Commission for alleged war crimes against civilians in the climax to its prolonged war with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in
Any observer of the on-going election campaigns by UMNO and Pakatan Rakyat will notice the stark difference between the two principal contenders and this may determine the victory or defeat in the 13th General Election for the respective parties. The Barisan Nasional is a coalition of 14 political parties. The Pakatan Rakyat is a coalition of essen
The government seems hell-bent on scoring a self-goal. Having presented a mediocre budget in response to tough challenges, it wants to make the tax environment all the more uncertain. Having lost a court case, it wants to subvert the judgment. Having brought investment to a trickle, it wants to scare away investors—domestic and foreign. All i
The idea of Germany having an independent national strategy runs counter to everything that Germany has wanted to be since World War II and everything the world has wanted from Germany. In a way, the entire structure of modern Europe was created to take advantage of Germany's economic dynamism while avoiding the threat of German domination. In writ
Almost five years ago, when the Rs 1980 crore “Kuttanad Project”, devised by a celebrated agricultural scientist and his team was launched with much fanfare in Kerala, I had predicted that the project was doomed to take Kerala to ecological disaster. None had listened. So that is what is happening now. In September 2011, I was in Kuttan
Well this is the anniversary week of the infamous MyLai Massacre, March 16, 1968. 1968 was the year that “everything happened”. Here is a short list of significant events: the Tet Offensive, the beginning of the defeat for the US in Vietnam; the Prague Spring anti-totalitarian revolt and its ultimate violent repression by the USSR: stud
A long reigning orthodoxy among India’s Pakistan experts is the profound belief, propagated with the most passionate intensity, that Pakistan has survived its 65-year existence apart from the motherland only on account of American aid. Somehow this myth gives Indians a sense of vicarious redemption, by shoring up their self-esteem, and e
Letters can be a great instrument to showcase the socio-political landscape of a society and culture and many have used this as a great tool to express their feelings – both sorrow and happiness. The letters of Dalit priest Father William Premdass Chaudhary reveal a dark world of discrimination and untouchability that is widespread in th
If I asked someone “who was a victim of slavery in the 1800s?” and “who suffered at the hands of the Nazi’s during the Holocaust?” the most likely answers would be African-Americans and members of the Jewish community, respectively. What most people do not know is that there is a group who lived through both of these t
With all the compulsions of a coalition Government with difficult partners and various pulls and pressures to cope with, there were nevertheless some expectations from the budget which Mr. Pranab Mukherjee has failed abysmally to deliver. The poor and the middle class, groaning under unprecedented price rises over the past two years, not to mention
“The mighty fortress of Brahmanism” is the phrase used by Monier Williams (author of the Sanskrit English Dictionary, 1899) to describe Hinduism. It is a mix of ignorance, hatred, fascination, racism, and the desire to overcome this religion by an ignorant colonialist of the 19th century, but it sums up the general ignorance of the Chri
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Mosul: A few short years ago, the Rabia border crossing between Syria and Iraq, was being used to smuggle weapons from Syria into Iraq, where they ended up in the hands of Iraqis fighting each other and US troops. Now that situation has been reversed, with guns being smuggled back into Syria, ostensibly to arm Syrian revolutionaries embroiled in an
While all the incessant warmongering directed toward Iran at the annual AIPAC policy conference in Washington was grabbing the headlines, the momentum for Western intervention into Syria continued to steadily build. All those neo-con “real men,” it appears, just might prefer to go to Tehran via Damascus. Taking to the Senate floor on Mo
Reports appearing in the Indian press, emanating from the statement made by the Home Ministry in Parliament, on the eve of the 22nd anniversary of the exodus of the community of Hindus from Kashmir, that not a single family living in exile had availed of the Prime Minister’s Package, should give no cause for any surprise. What should cause su
Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee has submitted a mediocre answer sheet in response to a tough question paper. Faced with the triple challenge of reviving a sagging economy, returning to the path of fiscal consolidation, and restoring reform credentials of a politically battered government, he has tried, invoking Shakespeare, to be cruel in order t
The discovery in late 2010 of the huge natural gas bonanza off Israel’s Mediterranean shores triggered other neighboring countries to look more closely at their own waters. The results revealed that the entire eastern Mediterranean is swimming in huge untapped oil and gas reserves. That discovery is having enormous political, geopolitical as
Recent discoveries of not just significant, but huge oil and gas reserves in the little-explored Mediterranean Sea between Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, Israel, Syria and Lebanon suggest that the region could become literally a “new Persian Gulf” in terms of oil and gas riches. As with the old Persian Gulf, discovery of hydrocarbon riches cou
Simply put, China has three core strategic interests. Paramount among them is the maintenance of domestic security. Historically, when China involves itself in global trade, as it did in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the coastal region prospers, while the interior of China -- which begins about 160 kilometers (100 miles) from the coast and run
Moscow: The anticipated apocalypse did not come to pass. The presidential election in Russia ran its course, Putin was duly elected, and to the great astonishment of the opposition, multimillion crowds demanding the blood of the tyrant did not materialize. Only some 15,000 protesters gathered in central Moscow and dispersed peacefully within two ho
Recent elections in five states showed voters rejecting the undemocratic political culture of the two major national parties, where central leaders with declining ability to harvest votes have promoted a politics of patronage and entitlement, indifferent to the needs and aspirations of voters. Both parties lie battered. The Bharatiya Janata Party h
[FF Editorial: I hate to say it, but, I did say it – Israel and US don’t have the balls to launch a war against Iran. I have also repeatedly said that Israel don’t have any nuclear weapons. This is further corroborated by the report in the Israeli daily, Maariv, of the closed-door meeting between Obama and Netanyahu. Allegedly, th
Jerusalem is a mosaic of diverse religious and ethnic communities, including small minorities that live largely separated to themselves. Nestled in the Old City and a few outlying neighborhoods are members of a unique non-Arab community that have much in common with the Jewish majority but have had trouble fitting into Israeli society. These are th
Defense lawyers say Manning was clearly a troubled young soldier whom the Army should never have deployed to Iraq or given access to classified material while he was stationed there ... They say he was in emotional turmoil, partly because he was a gay soldier at a time when homosexuals were barred from serving openly in the US armed forces.”
Tokyo station has dangerously high radiation level prompting Bob Nichols to headline his essay “Evacuate Tokyo.”[1] Even as you settle down to absorbing the latest shock, Fukushima Diary by Lori Mochizuki continues to push us all deeper into the deep hole of depression. But the world has promised to keep smiling. Over 33,000 have a
[FF Editorial: In the unlikely event that Zionist Israel attacks Iran’s nuclear installations, Iran should not retaliate against any US targets, military or civilian. This is because Israel wants the US to be the cannon fodder at no risk to itself. Suppose, Israel sends some war planes to bomb Iran’s nuclear sites (an exercise in futili
The fall of the Soviet Union ended the European epoch, the period in which European power dominated the world. It left the United States as the only global power, something for which it was culturally and institutionally unprepared. Since the end of World War II, the United States had defined its foreign policy in terms of its confrontation with th
“When a country goes to war, as the US did in 2003 with disastrous results, there should be some lessons learned on the table. It would appear there are no lessons learned being used in the current hysteria. The most important is peer review. The accusations leveled against Iraq in the nuclear area in 2003 were largely from the mouth of one s
Noam Chomsky is the expert on the US Media who did not notice its Jewish ownership or control. The world’s leading intellectual has consistently denied that the Jewish lobby manipulates Presidents and Congress. Instead, he puts the line that Israel is a mere Regional Outpost of the Empire - a Sheriff implementing US policy in the Middle East.
In the years of conscious, self-inflicted decline at home, “losses” continued to mount elsewhere. In the past decade, for the first time in 500 years, South America has taken successful steps to free itself from western domination, another serious loss. The region has moved towards integration, and has begun to address some of the terri
Significant anniversaries are solemnly commemorated -- Japan’s attack on the US naval base at Pearl Harbor, for example. Others are ignored, and we can often learn valuable lessons from them about what is likely to lie ahead. Right now, in fact. At the moment, we are failing to commemorate the 50th anniversary of President John F. KennedyR
Did Stalin, the Soviet dictator, die a peaceful death in his own bed or was he poisoned by Beria? What is the new medical evidence? With the possible exception of Mao Tse-tung, the greatest mass murderer in history was Joseph Dzhugashvili, who was better known as Stalin (1879-1953). Stalin ruled the Soviet Union virtually from 1924 to 1953 with an
In an article published on his website, Russia’s presidential hopeful and present premier, Vladimir Putin, hit the nail on the head when he wrote: “In a global sense we are facing the risk of turning into an ‘empty space’ whose fate will not be decided by us.” If the authorities do nothing to combat the demographic cri
The two books reviewed in the following could hardly be more different; the first is a scholarly historical review of the intermediate period the separates the death of the last hegemonic Mughal Emperor from the failed great rebellion that sought to end British rule over India; the second is a lavishly illustrated large sized volume which includes
Over the last year, there has been endless talk about Air India being a white elephant that the Government should either partially privatise or completely sell-off in order to relieve a crushing burden on the taxpayer. The writer believes there is an hitherto neglected dimension of the Maharaja story, which merits investigation.Critics argue that g
A convergence of events in the early days of March underscores the immediate danger of an Israeli strike against Iran, which could trigger a larger war extending beyond the Persian Gulf region, and drawing in the Eurasian superpowers, Russia and China. First, on March 4-7, AIPAC will be holding its annual convention in Washington, D.C., highlighted
On February 10th of last year, at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago, I spoke about the Arab Revolution that had started in Tunisia and spread to Egypt. I told my audience: “Look at me. Can you tell? I am overwhelmed. I am smiling. Since January 14th, I have been dancing with joy. The Arab World, and freedom loving people every
The visit by Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar to Russia Feb. 7-9 has ushered in closer relations between the two countries, providing hope of much-needed regional stability at a time when US-Britain-Qatar-Saudi Arabia-led forces are wreaking havoc throughout the Arab world and the Maghreb nations of North Africa. The crisis in the